Catchphrases. Everybody has one. Mine is “floor food!” I…don’t have a kitchen table. Arnold Schwarzenegger has so many catchphrases that he released a paperback book called Arnold’s Schwarzeneggers. The title didn’t make any sense but it was filled with at least two of his most famous catchphrases. “Hasta mañana, roachie” from the failed Terminator television spin-off The Bug Murderer, “these hemorrhoids hurt so much!” from his unreleased sex tape and, of course, “SHOOT THE BABY BOMB!” from the blockbuster film Baby Geniuses 3: Babies vs. Seniors are just a few of the classics that I can’t remember.
Then we have Leonard Stupivitz, and he has “oooh no you don’t!” And that’s literally all he has. For Leonard isn’t actually a character. He has no traits. He doesn’t even have a face. He’s played by five different actors throughout the film and even by a dog for a scene. We don’t even know his name until the second of five different credit sequences. Before any of the first four allows even one person to run out of the theater crying Leonard bursts onto the screen saying “oooh no you don’t!” and starts eating the credits, or lighting them on fire. I think during one credit sequence an usher just walked around smashing people in the head with a hammer. It was an interactive experience.
In a scene David Lynch might be asked about in an interview someday, and for just one scene, Leonard is a doctor in a delivery room. “The baby is too early! The Mayans were right!!” the nurse screams while jumping out a window. Recognizing that it is only five in the morning but unable to tell the difference between a Mayan and a Dyson, Leonard reluctantly agrees. He pulls a rubber mallet from somewhere behind him, and, exclaiming “oooh no you don’t!” he proceeds to whack that soft little baby head with the mallet, trying to force it back into its mother.
It’s a bizarrely funny scene, especially after the baby’s head cracks open like an egg and a dozen baby chickens skitter out. “Oooh no you don’t!” Leonard cries again, scooping up all the chicks before they get away. Leonard is eating tiny pieces of fried chicken throughout the rest of the picture.
The whole film has a plot arc that resembles some half-cocked terrorist plot to raid a puzzle store and mix up all the dog puzzles with the architecture puzzles. And as cute as paws would be on the Eiffel Tower, it wouldn’t make any sense outside of The Dawgs of War, a TNT mini-series about a dog revolution that doesn’t exist yet.
During another complete non-sequitur of a scene, Leonard is on a yacht in some scummy apartment complex pond. “OOOH NO YOU DON’T!” he hollers toward the cloudless sky for no reason. Then he falls into the water and gets eaten by a pond shark. Oh, and the shark drowns. Why does it drown? I have no idea. I just made up an explanation in my head (depression). Either way, its eleven minute struggle to stay afloat is the most boring example of water-related tension put to celluloid since absolutely no one wondered whether DiCaprio really was the “king of the world”. Our Leo, of course, is the king of nothing and, as it turns out, he’s not dead either. “Oooh no I don’t!” he screams as he bursts out of the freshly dug ground like a hyperactive zombie.
Oh No You Don’t! is formatted specifically to give its main character as many chances to use his catchphrase as possible, and after tallying some seventy-eight of them it began to feel like searching for hay in a hay stack or, more accurately, poop in a poop stack. Still, if this bizarre production threesome of a schizophrenic, a toddler and a carrot ever developed another film together they certainly won’t top this one. It’s a romp through a magical world of insanity and I, for one, watched it. And that, my friends, is one amazing success story.
The Fake Movie Critic 